“Howl’s Moving Castle, with Solar Panels” – using Stable Diffusion / DreamStudio LIte
Like a lot of folks, I’ve been messing about with the various AI image generators as they open up.
While at Google I got to play with language model work quite a bit, and we worked on a series of projects looking at AI tools as ‘thought partners’ – but mainly in the space of language with some multimodal components.
As a result perhaps – the things I find myself curious about are not so much the models or the outputs – but the interfaces to these generator systems and the way they might inspire different creative processes.
For instance – Midjourney operates through a discord chat interface – reinforcing perhaps the notion that there is a personage at the other end crafting these things and sending them back to you in a chat. I found a turn-taking dynamic underlines play and iteration – creating an initially addictive experience despite the clunkyness of the UI. It feels like an infinite game. You’re also exposed (whether you like it or not…) to what others are producing – and the prompts they are using to do so.
Dall-e and Stable Diffusion via Dreamstudio have more of a ‘traditional’ tool UI, with a canvas where the prompt is rendered, that the user can tweak with various settings and sliders. It feels (to me) less open-ended – but more tunable, more open to ‘mastery’ as a useful tool.
All three to varying extents resurface prompts and output from fellow users – creating a ‘view-source’ loop for newbies and dilettantes like me.
Gerard Serra – who we were lucky to host as an intern while I was at Google AIUX – has been working on perhaps another possibility for ‘co-working with AI’.
While this is back in the realm of LLMs and language rather than image generation, I am a fan of the approach: creating a shared canvas that humans and AI co-work on. How might this extend to image generator UI?
My unedited responses to Theo’s questions for the article in full are below.
Paul was an incredible artist, activist and a wonderful friend to my dad – I’m so glad he’s getting this recognition now.
How did you know Paul Peter Piech?
He was a good friend of my father – who ran a small picture framers in Porthcawl, where Peter had settled. Peter came in most weeks – initially to get things framed, but also after a while to sit and chat with my dad while he worked. This was the late 80s I think, as I was still in comprehensive school. I also worked after school and weekends in a local printers, and Peter would occasionally come in there for photocopying.
What we he like when you knew him?
Well – at one level he was this very friendly, curious obviously intelligent old man. A bit of a Yoda figure in a way! He was also probably the first American I’d ever met! He spoke like the movies! He was very indulgent of my questions and didn’t ever talk down to me. He knew I aspired to work in graphic design at the time and was studying art, working at a printer’s after school etc. and he was very encouraging. It was also one of those things where for the first time I saw my dad talk to another grown-up and have proper debate. They’d argue (good naturedly) for hours about anyting – politics, religion, philosophy, science, art – and often Paul would get the better of my father!
Were you aware of his background working in advertising and did he ever talk about it?
No not at all – I only really knew of that through my Dad. Paul was more interested in talking about human rights, philosophers or art – which I think he saw as central to his ‘second career’. I only later really learned about that side of his career, unfortunately mainly in obituaries.
What do you remember most about him?
I remember an incredible energy and restlessness alongside huge curiosity and kindness. I was very lucky to have met him in such a formative time in my life – and his influence on me was enormous. I don’t know if it’s down to him that I ended up living in Brooklyn and working in Manhattan twenty years later but I like to think he set me on my way.
I first met them both at the RCA, and so I was thrilled when they asked me in late summer to be part of their show at ApexArt that would be based on the premise of designing future systems or objects for New York City’s Office of Emergency Management.
The show is on now until December 19th 2015 at ApexArt, but I thought I’d write up a little bit of the project I submitted to the group show along with my fantastic collaborators Isaac Blankensmith and Matt Delbridge
The premise
Chris and Elliott’s first recruit was writer Tim Maughan who based on the initial briefing with the OEM created a scenario that we as designers and artists would respond to, and create props for a group of improvisational actors to use in a disaster training simulation. More of that later!
Here’s what we got early on from Tim by way of stimulusâŚ
Backdrop NYC has been hit by a major pandemic (the exact nature of which is still to be decided – something new/fictitious). The city has been battling against it for several weeks now, with research showing that it may spread easily via the transit system. The city, in association with the public transport and the police are enforcing a strict regime of control, monitoring, and  – where necessary – quarantining. By constant monitoring of infection data (using medical reports, air monitoring/sampling, social media data mining etc) they are attempting to watch, predict, and hopefully limit spread. Using mobile âpop-upâ checkpoints they are monitoring and controlling use of buses and the subway, and in extreme cases closing off parts of the city completely from mass transit. Although it seems to be largely working, and fatalities have been relatively low so far, it has created an understandable sense of paranoia and distrust amongst NYC citizens.  Setting The Canal street subway station, late evening. Scenario Our characters are two individuals heading home to Brooklyn after leaving a show at apexart. They are surprised to find that the streets seem fairly empty. Just as they reach Canal station they are alerted (via Wireless Emergency Alert) that quarantine and checkpoint procedures have been activated in the neighbourhood, and a pop-up infection checkpoint has been set up at the entrance to the subway. Theyâve never encountered one of these before, but in order to get home they must pass through it by proving they do not pose an infection.
Our proposals
I submitted two pieces with Isaac and Matt for the show.
The first concept âCitibikefrastructureâ was built out into a prop which features in the gallery, the second concept âBodyclocksâ featured in the catalog and briefly in the final performed scenario.
1. âCitibikefrastructureâ
This first concept uses the NYC citibike bike share program as a widely installed base of checkpoints / support points in the city that have data and power, plus very secure locking mechanisms connected to the network.
The essential thought behind this project was this:Â What if these were used in times of emergency with modular systems of mobile equipment that plugged into them?
I started to think of both top-down and bottom-up uses for this system.
Top-down uses would be to assist in ‘command and control’ type situations and mainly by the OEM and other emergency services in the city.
TOP-DOWN:
e.g. Command post
Loudhailer system
Solar panels
Space heaters
Shelter / lights / air-conditioning
Wireless mesh networking
Refrigerator for medicine / perishable materials
Water purification
But perhaps more promising to me seemed ‘bottom-up’ uses
BOTTOM-UP:
USB charging stations
Inspiration: after Hurricane Sandy many people who still had electricity offered it up via running powerstrips and extension cords into the streets so people could charge their mobile devices and alert loved ones, keep up with the news etc.
Wireless mesh networking – p2p store/forward text across the citibike network.
LE bluetooth connection to smartphones with âtake-awayâ data
PDF maps
emergency guides
Bluetooth p2p Noticeboard for citizens
Blockchain-certified emergency local currency dispenser!
Barter/volunteer âcashâ infrastructure for self-organising relief orgs a la Occupy Sandy
1:1 Sketch proto
After making some surreptitious measurements of the Citibike docking stations, I started to build a very simple 1:1 model of one of these ‘bottom-up’ modules for the show at the fantastic Bien Hecho woodworking academy in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard.
Detail design and renderings
Meanwhile, Isaac had both taken my crappy sketches far beyond into a wonderfully-realised modular system and created some lovely renders to communicate it.
Initial sketch by Isaac Blankensmith
Isaac then started to flesh out a modular system that could accommodate the majority of the use-cases we had brainstormed.
Some final adjustments were made to the sketch model on the days of installation in the gallery â notably the inclusion of a flashing emergency light, and functioning cellphone charger cables which I hopd would prove popular with gallery visitors if nothing else!
2. âBodyclocksâ
This one is definitely more in the realm of ‘speculative design’ and perhaps flirts with the dystopian a little more than I usually like to!
Bodyclocks riffs off the âclocks-for-robotsâ concept we sketched out at BERG that created computer-readable objects syncâd to time and place.
Bodyclocks extends this idea to some kind of time-reactive dye, inkjet-squirted onto skin by connected terminals in order to verify and control the movements of individuals in a quarantined city / city districtâŚ
Iâd deliberated chosen to âparasiteâ this onto the familiar and mundane design of the âsanitation sprayâ stations that proliferated suddenly in public/private spaces at the time of the H1N1 scare of 2009âŚ
When you think about it, a new thing appeared in our semi-public realm â a new ritual, with it.
People would quickly habituate such objects and give themselves new temporary tracking âtattoosâ every time they crossed a thresholdâŚ
So, the dystopian angle is pretty obvious here. It doesn’t tend to reflect well on societies when they start to force people to identifying marks after all…
We definitely all talked about that a lot and under what circumstances people would tolerate or even elect to have a bodyclock tattoo. Matt Delbridge started creating some fantastic visuals and material to support the scenario.
For the purposes of the show and the performances, Matt D. even made a stamp that the actors could use to give each other bodyclocks…
Would the ritual of applying it in order to travel through the city be seen as something of a necessary evil, much like the security theatre of modern air travel? Or could a visible sign of how far you needed to travel spur assistance from strangers in a city at times of crisis? This proposal aimed to provoke those discussions.
The show and performance
One of the most interesting and exciting parts of being involved in this was that Chris and Elliott wanted to use actors to improvise with our designs as props and Tim’s script and prompt cards as context.
I thought this was a brilliant and brave move â unreliable narrators and guides taking us on as designers and interpreting the work for the audience – and perhaps exposing any emperor’s new clothes or problematic assumptions as they go…
From Chapter 14, “Beethoven Was Wrong”, on Steve Reich’s accidental composition of ‘It’s Gonna Rain’
“In one sense, all he done was to isolate a technological quirk: the machines essentially wrote It’s Gonna Rain by themselves and he was simply smart enough not to stop them.”
from later on in that chapter – less profound perhaps, but no less wonderful:
“[Philip] Glass also worked as a plumber, and one day installed a dishwasher in the apartment of the art critic Robert Hughes.”
The problem with ideas Ăs, the idea is often simply a way to focus your interest in making a work. The work isn’t necessarily, I think – a function of the work is not to express the idea…. The idea focuses your attention in a certain way that helps you to do the work.
Just finished watching Julian Temple’s film about Ray Davies and The Kinks: “Imaginary Man”.
It’s incredibly tender toward it’s subject – which is at once Ray, his music, the band – and London.
The Turner-esque, painterly imagery alternates with more graphic compositions of Davies’ peregrinations around North London.
It’s a series of psychographic sketches, punctuated by Kinks songs – in archive footage, in cover versions and most affectingly perhaps, hummed, sung and stumbled through by Davies as he strolls.
He’s cast by the film as a flawed-heir to Blake – wandering London, inventing his own sung-systems rather than be enslaved by another man’s.
Chorus by UVA and Mira Calix is an installation at The Wapping Project until the 18th July.
It’s deceptively simple but powerful – lights and speakers on pendulums swing and illuminate, emitting building, swooping, harmonies of operatic chorus notes. You walk around and underneath it, but all the time it surround you.
The darkness of the old boiler house that The Wapping Project calls home becomes something like the engine room of a massive brick starship, or the sanctum sanctorum of a neo-Victorian occult engineering cult.
There are further echoes of scifi.
The chorus is aurally-reminiscent of the Ligeti-soaked startup sequences of Kubrick’s stargates.
It’s a hauntological intervention, an architecture made of immaterials, a ghost-box of sorts; a real, working, time machine and a wonderful excuse to head to Wapping.
“beware of the professional or specialist who when confronted with a problem having to do with design â seems suddenly to abandon the disciplines of his own profession and put on his art hat â this can happen to those who are otherwise most rational â doctors, engineers, politicians, philosophers.”
Petafloptimism 